~ exploring new landscapes for learning

Category Archives: Disrupted Learning

“Social science studies show people often feel the disruption or mess is getting in the way of their ability to complete the task, while in reality, their discomfort is actually helping them reach higher.” Tim Harford

It is a time of great opportunity and challenge for schools. In many schools, leaders are embracing the need to rethink all aspects of education in an effort to equip students for the world they live in. In our middle school, we are in a process of disrupting education. As I have documented a bit on this blog, in recent years, we have radically rebuilt our assessment system, implemented a 1:1 laptop program, adopted Google Apps For Education, built a Makerspace, and, next year, we will launch a new block schedule that has a daily Personal Learning block for all students, coupled with a stronger commitment to the Arts, Creativity and Design. Each change has begun with intensive reading: books, blogs, and academic articles, followed by critical questioning of our current practices. We articulate where we want to go, and then engage in the complex process of getting there. We invite all faculty voices into the conversation and encourage teachers to take the lead on new ideas.

This process, like any learning we would want for our students, is messy, iterative and complex. We are often required to challenge deeply-held practices, and reimagine traditionally successful ways of doing things. Sometimes the obstacles seem insurmountable. Occasionally it appears as if we will need to compromise student needs for contextual, cultural or systemic realities. Now and again conversations become heated. Somehow, we manage to find solutions we hadn’t previously envisioned as possible, because of dogged determination. Harford is spot on when he talks about the discomfort aspect of disruption, and sometimes it can feel downright painful.

There is a school of thought that suggests that professional collaboration should be carefully structured and abide by certain conventions. Truth be told, however, in the intensity of these messy conversations, such considerations must take a back seat to the centrality of doing what’s best for students. This does not mean that our conversations are not respectful, but we prefer the dissonance of challenging conversations to the sometimes contrived collegiality of being nice to each other. We share candid opinions of one another’s ideas, we interrupt each other, we freely offer our perspectives. Attempting to adhere to a list of conversational rules, would actually inhibit our conversations. If we consume energy monitoring the ways we interact, we sacrifice the authenticity of that collaboration. As we try to avoid making each other uncomfortable, we miss the discomfort of reaching our highest level of work.

There are no norms for disruption. The messiness, the discomfort, that’s where breakthrough happens.

We recently disrupted our school schedule so that our students could build hands for kids who were born without them. Three of these children and their families were there to show our students the profound impact of this most authentic work.

Two of our teachers heard about a group called Enabling the Future from another group of teachers at a workshop, on a totally different topic. This organization asks individuals with 3D printers to volunteer to print hands for people in need. This is a grassroots movement, started by one woman in the United States. Like most powerful, grassroots social innovations, Enable now has worldwide chapters. Through the website, our teachers got in contact with Thierry Oquidam, from E-Nable France. His passion for the project led him to offer to work with our students. We built a prototype, sent it to Enable, made several adjustments to materials, strength, and design before our work was accepted into the program. We then printed pieces for twenty hands, in a variety of colors. Forty students from our Student Council met Thierry and the families, and spent a day of school assembling twenty prosthetic hands. For everyone involved, it was an incredible, empowering learning opportunity and life experience.

That’s the short story. Of course, in the background, were countless hours of preparation and logistics. The result was unequivocally impressive. But this is not my take-away. As Assistant Principal, I greatly appreciate this learning day for our students and I see it as something much more than a one-day event. The process that led us to this day reflects the type of learning we would like for our students everyday.

Through a series of connections, our students are now part of a global community working to make a difference at a local level. The task is as authentic and relevant as they come. Perhaps one of those students will be inspired to build prosthetic limbs in the future, to study birth defects, or to become an inventor. It was exactly the type of learning that should be happening in a modern school. It was a day beyond disruption. One day can become two. Two days can become three. This kind of learning can and should become everyday.

“Today, we have the capability to give every child the tools, materials, and context to achieve their potential, unencumbered by the limited imaginations of today’s education policy makers. There are multiple pathways to learning what we have always taught, and things to do that were unimaginable just a few years ago.” – Sylvia Libow Martinez & Gary Stager, Invent to Learn

If you ask teachers why they teach, most will express a profound sense of purpose to connect with and inspire students to reach their potential; to give them the self-confidence and skills necessary to lead happy, successful lives. Teachers become teachers because they believe they can have an impact on the future of young people. Often, educators cite the impact of a teacher in their own lives as the key factor in their decision to join the profession. Clearly, teachers have noble goals for their professional careers. They want to inspire and, in turn, to be inspired.

Yet, in schools, all too often, the way we discuss learning and growth is mired in the language of certainty, measurability and accountability. We ask teachers to document learning, to implement curriculum standards, to analyse testing data. Where does this focus on certainty come from? As we prepare our students for an unknown future, we need to find ways to inspire creativity, encourage exploration, and embrace uncertainty. Teachers focused on strict unit and lesson planning protocols may find their own joy for learning constrained in the process. That is not to say that planning, goals and standards do not have their place in schools. However, if that is the dominant conversation we are having, do we not rob both our students and teachers of their potential, of the nobility of the learning process?

Granted, most schools have mission and vision statements that are intended to outline their overall purpose. Yet many of those contain statements about “lifelong learners” and “global citizens” that are not clearly defined, and do not reflect the exciting opportunities emerging technologies offer for learners. In the past, vision statements were crafted to define a future direction. How is this possible in our current, rapidly changing world? How do we define the future of learning with certainty? Why must it be prescriptive?

As David Perkins noted in Futurewise: “What’s worth learning?” is an impossible question if we want the perfect answer. We are indeed educating for the unknown. But with some thoughtful criteria and a sense of mission, we can grope smart.”

Some people may crave certainty and clear direction, but this is the precise quality that can rob us of our creativity. Modern school leaders are challenged with the task of building a culture that leverages learning purpose in a manner that enables ambitious, noble teachers to leverage and harness the enormous potential of new technology tools. As leaders, we need to use language that captures the excitement of the dynamic changes happening in our world, language that encourages and inspires teachers to take risks. We need to unleash teacher creativity so they can do the same for their students. Ed Catmull, in Creativity Inc. sums up the leader’s role:

Unleashing creativity requires that we loosen the controls, accept risk, trust our colleagues, work to clear the path for them, and pay attention to anything that creates fear. Doing all these things won’t necessarily make the job of managing a creative culture easier. But ease isn’t the goal; excellence is.

“The real driver for creativity is an appetite for discovery and a passion for the work itself. When students are motivated to learn, they naturally acquire the skills they need to get the work done” – Ken Robinson

It was the end of a long, and exciting day at our school. In the Zone was an event designed to provide students and teachers with opportunities to explore ways of learning that will help them develop key skills centred around: creating, innovating, designing, communicating, media literacy and life balance. It was the result of nearly a year of thinking, planning and learning. By all accounts, it was a huge success, and the shared excitement between students and teachers hung palpably in the air as we reached the end of the day . It was at this point that a ninth grade student asked a simple question: “Why can’t school be like this everyday?”

School change is not easy. But a takeaway from that day, is that re-envisioning learning everyday is an attainable goal. We had designed a day to focus on the skills that we know students will need not only for their future, but also for their present. Isn’t this what school should be like everyday?

We didn’t define Science objectives, yet students learned about circuits to build their light boxes. We did not give practice problems, yet students problem-solved as they created video games and designed remote control cars. They communicated their ideas using voice, body and words. We created supportive environments for exploration, risk-taking, creative expression and collaboration, and the learning took care of itself.

Moving on from that day, our faculty have embraced these ideas and worked to incorporate them in and across subject areas. We are currently redesigning our schedule to provide longer blocks for more in-depth learning activities, and time in which students may explore personal learning. We are empowering teachers to abandon outmoded practices and content to make room for more sustained, meaningful learning. We have refined our vision to include a digital presence for each student that will enable them to to develop a personal learning network and share their learning globally.

In The Zone was an amazing and exciting day. Had we let it be just one day, it would have been a memorable event. Yet it has become more than that. The day is now a roadmap that describes what we want learning to look like everyday. We know where we have to go, and our students would like us to get there soon. The difficult question might be, how do we get there? A good starting point, I would suggest, might be to start as George Couros suggests:

“Let’s start asking kids to find problems and give them a sense of purpose in solving something authentic.”

Moreover, let’s listen to the powerful questions our students are asking and act on them.

“Wait! Hold on! I just need a few more minutes! I want to get this just right…”a Middle School student working on a video projectwhen the bell rings

Somewhere along the road to embracing an ambitious vision that will improve student learning one is often confronted with an inevitable tension between the status quo and the need to disrupt the most fundamental aspects of the school day. Our vision for learning involves providing greater student agency, opportunities to empower our learners through personal learning, individual passions, meaningful action, and modern learning. We asked ourselves: how do we best prepare our students for the challenges ahead? More critically, how do we provide them with the skills, the beliefs, the mindset to help solve the challenges that will face them? We started with a two-year process of changing our assessment system to include focus on formative feedback and authentic contexts. We renovated our learning spaces to provide for collaboration and flexible grouping. We adopted technologies that supported the type of learning defined in the vision. Each of these changes was possible because we had a clear learning vision for our students and because we work with a group of teachers who have collectively established a culture of excellence that puts students first. And yet, we knew we had to do more. We needed to create time for students to pursue their personal learning interests. We needed to give students time to delve into authentic learning in depth. We needed to disrupt on a grand scale. Time was of the essence.

Schedules are notorious scapegoats. With the usual constraints of lunch times, buses, shared facilities and teachers, leaders have long used scheduling elements to end the change conversation. “We can’t bring about that change. The schedule just won’t let us.” As if the schedule has a life and will of its own. Of course, the devil is in the details. In fact, we spent three days in the scheduling underworld. The process was exhausting, and I’ve been thinking about why that is. School leadership can be tiring business on the best of days: why was the process of building a new schedule so utterly exhausting? Colleagues I speak to assume it is about the intensity of hours sitting at the computer, making sure that each click and tick is accurate. Certainly, that is part of it, but I am convinced that is only part, in fact, the smaller portion of the challenge.

The most tiring part of scheduling resides in all of the decisions that go along with each click and tick. Building a schedule is an essential component of a good school. Only the quality of teachers is more important than how we choose to allocate our learning time. Each decision must be guided by student learning first and foremost. Often the easiest solution is one that compromises this principle by limiting student choices, for example. Options that may make things easier for part-time teachers may block student access to certain classes. Small groups of students may require schedules that consume valuable resources that might benefit larger groups. What is pedagogically ideal may be realistically problematic. Quite often, easy decisions are not in the best interests of students. Each decision along the way requires consideration of a complex variety of perspectives and implications. These decisions require a clear, consistent learning vision that serve as a roadmap one is obligated to remain faithful to.

“Wait! Hold on! I just need a few more minutes! I want to get this just right…”This is a comment I heard while teaching a film production class. The student simply wanted to make sure that the music, images and effects were perfectly aligning to convey her message. When students become highly engaged in work that has real purpose, time disappears as they strive to produce the best possible result. Scheduling is the process of operational compromise, but we should never compromise on what is best for students. Changing the school day for teachers is an exhausting process that requires change management, but it is the business of making future decisions that impact student learning that is the most demanding work a leader can do.

When I started teaching in the early 1990s, I lived with my best friend who was also a beginning teacher. We were both eager learners and readers, and professional reading was an important part of our development as teachers. We didn’t have many options for getting our hands on recent publications, and many were too expensive for us, but we were determined to keep learning. So about once every six months or so, we would take a trip to our Professional Learning Mecca, the bookshop at Columbia’s Teacher’s College. We would take an hour long train ride to Grand Central Station. Then the 2 or 3 to Washington Heights, and walk to the corner of Broadway and 120th. It wasn’t a very big place, but we could spend hours there combing through the place to select one book each, or maybe two, depending on the current finances. We found Attwell, Graves, Darling-Hammond, Hayes Jacobs. We treasured those books and they made me feel connected to the current thinking in my profession. Looking back, we were lucky. At least we had that bookshop, (which no longer exists, sadly).

I am still an avid professional reader, just now the process looks vastly different. My Twitter feed is a constant source of interesting articles and blog posts. Yes, there is still a list of writers that I return to regularly, as well as a combination of people whose writing I read when I happen across it. Some reading is from professional organizations, some from experts, some from teachers in the classroom. All are important learning pieces for me. And I get to read other’s thoughts on these ideas, and add my own. So very far from highlighting what I liked in a book, or reading it aloud to my distracted roommate.

Of course I still read books. Most of them are recommended by people in my Twitter feed, some are even written by them. These days, I “Buy now with 1-Click” and have them on my Kindle without even having to rouse the dog sleeping on the couch next to me. And I rarely spend more than 20 USD.

I am more connected than I could ever imagine, to educators in all corners of the world. Part of my work is encouraging other educators to experience and grow from building their own learning networks. It is not always easy to help them embrace this new landscape. Often I think, how lucky we are now.

And, yes, the friend that I shared the book adventure train rides with is still one of my best friends, despite our being separated by oceans for nearly 20 years. Some things never change.

Someone asked me a question recently: “Tell me about something new you have learned this year and how you learned it?” At first my mind went to something I had discovered on Twitter, and some other technology-related skills, but then I thought of something that really put me out of my comfort zone. Like most learning, this was personal: I cooked a turkey for the first time. I was hosting Christmas dinner at my place for the first time, and this was going to be key to the success of the day.

How did I learn to do it? The first thing I did was Google for a recipe. I included the words “easy” and “beginner” in my search. I read several recipes, from sites like the Food Network and BBC Food and watched a handful of step-by-step videos. I read the comments left by other community members about the recipes, and got some other perspectives. I admired the confidence of other cooks who added and adjusted without fear. Of course, I sought advice from local friends. I had a Skype call with our family expert, my younger brother, Paul, which led to an animated discussion on the relative merits of frying or brining. I opted for neither, despite his encouragement, but know that I might try these techniques once I get more experience. On the day, I selected a cooking method and recipe that I felt comfortable with, using ideas from my variety of assembled sources. I have all of these sources pinned to a Pinterest page, ready for hosting at my next family holiday, ready to share my learning with others.

I did this without a second’s thought about process, until I was asked that recent question about how I continue to learn. This set me thinking about how this process differed from the way my mother learned to roast a turkey. She learned primarily from her own local expert, her mother. And her mother learned the identical process from my great grandmother. They may have consulted a cookbook, certainly not more than one or two, probably written by Julia Child, a favorite of the time. She would have learned primarily by watching my grandmother.

Mom and I both learned how to roast a turkey. Both of us were motivated by a need to learn this skill. Unlike my mother, I had a variety of open sources and opinions to consult. I was able to combine and create a procedure that worked for my level of expertise, and I have some ideas of how and where I might extend my culinary learning if I would like expand my repertoire.

We know it is time to embrace learning opportunities that technology affords us. The one-size-fits-all deliver-the-learning approach is obsolete, so what should learning look like now? Perhaps there is something to be learned from my turkey experience. We need to provide opportunities for students to decide what they would like to learn, and then provide them with the time, space, resources and guidance in order for them to reach their goals. All of this must be built on a foundation of nurturing relationships. In essence, self-directed, self-selected learning experiences that result in a tangible product or action should be at the heart of education in our digital word.

This is a phrase that features prominently in many school vision and mission statements. We know that learning to learn will be key to our students futures as they “learn, relearn and unlearn” in a digital landscape that is exponentially accelerating the amount of knowledge at our disposal. In fact, this is not a mindset that we need students to adapt for the future, it is one they need today so that they may fully embrace the opportunities of the connected world. How do we genuinely ensure that students can become independent learners? To begin, we must ensure that all adults in the system can model modern learning themselves and, to do this, we need to shift much of our current thinking about professional learning.

Many schools and districts, my own included, schedule “PD days” each year, as if professional learning is an event that occurs only on specific days and dates. The model of attending hour-long sessions on pedagogy, technology tools or instructional strategies is alive and well, despite the fact that the research on this type of professional development has long shown it has little lasting or significant impact on teacher practice or, more precisely, on student learning. Despite intuitively knowing this, we continue to send faculty to conferences with optimistic hopes of learning infusion and school improvement.

We continue to rely on traditional, professional development “structures” and approaches: conferences, after school sessions, workshops by peers, the development of so-called professional learning communities. But such structures do not genuinely embrace the habits of lifelong learning students and teachers need. These approaches still require schools to provide the learning topics, scheduled time, and protocols for learning. They still resemble approaches used in a pre-digital world. This is not how our students learn today, though it is, ironically, how we continue to try to educate them. In the 21st century, learning is a connected endeavor.

We have long known that professional learning must be embedded and ongoing in order to have real impact. The words continuous and personal need to be added to this list. Professional learning communities provide the collaborative, supportive ecosystem colleagues need in order to grow, to truly become learners. Educational leaders: superintendents, principals, curriculum coordinators, team leaders, must first model what connected learning looks like before we can expect to develop a genuine culture of learning in our schools.

True learning leaders need to explore the learning potential of social media such as Twitter, in order to openly share their learning with colleagues and demonstrate digital learning in their communities. Leaders share learning celebrations through hashtags and blog posts. They are clear about what they are doing, and why. They demonstrate resilience by sticking at it. They model risk-taking by sharing their thoughts on learning with colleagues. They encourage and support faculty who join in. Just as we aspire for our student learners, they just don’t simply consume information and knowledge, they make a genuine effort to contribute to shared dialogue around learning.

School leaders talk about lifelong learning and 21st century skills, but until we show what is possible by contributing and collaborating using contemporary digital tools, taking the time to learn these tools for ourselves, those words will remain nothing more than empty, aspirational phrases.

We know that technology is transforming the way we live; reaching into all aspects of our lives. We know that schools are mired in traditional ways of thinking and operating. We know that we need to do better to prepare our students for their futures. We know we have digital tools available to help us to connect with others to help and support us to embrace the changes. The question remains: as school leaders, where do we start on the journey of disrupting education as we know it?

In a world where technology can make all learning personal and personalized, the road to change is similarly contextualized. Schools and communities face unique challenges, have different resources, and have……Here is the challenge and the opportunity for educational leaders; the process of disrupting school can start anywhere, and begin with any aspect of learning. But it must start.

We started with assessment. We knew that our traditional assessment system was defining learning for students, teachers and parents in ways that were not appropriate for the learning we wanted for our students. By changing our assessment beliefs as a community, we could help everyone understand the powerful learning that ubiquitous technology unlocks. To learn more about that process, read Michael Crowley’s four part blog series on our process here.

Focusing students and teachers on formative feedback and the ongoing process of learning rather than grade averages and points acquired, allowed teachers to reimagine what learning could look like within the classroom. We needed technology tools that could support this work. Then we found that we needed not just digital, but also physical spaces that would support the type of group and individual work teachers needed to meet the needs of all learners.

And then we knew we had to think about the ways that our traditional schedule restricted the kinds of learning we were trying to achieve.

Roughly, this has been our path to date. It is an ongoing journey. Each piece has lead us to the next. But how did we know where to start? We started with that piece that we knew we needed to focus on. Assessment was driving learning, and we knew that we wanted to transform learning. It was the right place to begin with our faculty and our students.

By no means is our path the only or the best way to go. As educators seek starting entry points for transformation of schools, the key starting point is the vision. From there, transformation can begin with any aspect of learning that connects vision and the needs of learners. Leaders know the aspects of their schools that could offer entry points. Be forewarned, once you begin rethinking one component of school, which is often a major undertaking, the next steps become self evident. As do the next, and the next. School leaders need to take the first steps. The only misstep is not moving at all.

The digital disruption has already happened, and it is past time to move the discussion from “will technology change education” to “how will we disrupt education”? What would that disruption look like? While it might be difficult to imagine, perhaps we could take some clues from the companies and service providers who are leading the way. Netflix and Alibaba provide choice, access, variety. Facebook and WeChat allows people to connect, share, and reconnect, as needed. Uber and Airbnb provide access to bring people and resources together. Someone has a car; someone needs a ride: the analog systems and barriers in between are now redundant. Credibility and reliability is built on reputation, based on level of expertise, within connected communities.

Could schools similarly become places where students are connected to a community of learners who can provide them with the support and expertise they need? Could they become places where members contribute relevant information to the community, and their learning reputation is based on these contributions? Technology already provides access to the resources, networks and creation tools to make this happen. Some students already learn in this way on their own. Will Richardson clearly outlines the shift that would be needed in his inspiring Ted TalkThe Surprising Truth About Learning in Schools. It’s time now to stop focusing on the question of “if education will be disrupted”, and engage purposefully in the “how can we disrupt education” dialogue.

At our school, we have begun to explore ways to make this new vision of learning real, starting with small steps that have now evolved into a complete schedule change, including the creation of a Personal Learning block. Our motivation is clear: to do what is best for students. Our impetus is perhaps best articulated by George Course in his recent book, TheInnovator’s Mindset, “Once we know better, we have to do better”.

In 2015, most educators know better. I’ll be blogging about our learning journey as we try to do better.